Antibody phage display: technique and applications.

inTrOducTiOn The production of human monoclonal mAbs for research and clinical use is closely related to the development of phage display technology, initially described by Smith in 1985 and further developed by other groups (e.g., Winter, McCafferty, Lerner, Barbas). Antibody phage display (APD) is based on genetic engineering of bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria) and repeated rounds of antigen-guided selection and phage propagation (Barbas, 2001). This technique allows in vitro selection of mAbs of virtually any specificity, greatly facilitating recombinant production of reagents for use in research and clinical diagnostics, as well as for pharmaceuticals for therapeutic use in humans (e.g., adalimumab, the first fully human APD-derived mAb) (Lee et al., 2007). Because of a physical connection established between the antibody fragment on the outside and the genetic information encoding the displayed protein within the phage, APD also allows comprehensive studies of genetics and function of antigen-specific mAbs. These characteristics make APD a powerful tool to better understand immunological processes and human diseases that involve formation of (auto-)antibodies against defined (self-)antigens.